


Work in Progress

by johnwcowan



Category: The People - Zenna Henderson
Genre: 21st Century, Gen, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-22 06:04:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11374098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnwcowan/pseuds/johnwcowan
Summary: One of the People who's spent most of his life in New York City meets and greets a hick :-) from Cougar Canyon.





	Work in Progress

Welcome, welcome! Glad to see you. How long will you be staying with us? That's good. I can show you around New York and give you an idea of what it's like to live here. A lot different from just being a tourist, that's for sure, or even a university student. No, don't worry, everyone living in the building is either one of Us or an Ally, so feel free to do whatever you want. "This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard." But if you must spit, clean it up, please!

Allies? Well. In the beginning there was just the People and the Outsiders. Nowadays, though, things are more complicated. Some of the People are Blends who have some Earth-human ancestors, even at Cougar Canyon. There are Allies, who are Earth-humans who know all about Us and keep our secrets: the first one was Dr. Curtis, but there are at least hundreds of them now. We have Allies in the government and in the military, including ones at Cheyenne Mountain who keep their superiors from noticing all the flights to and from the New Home.

Then there are the Outgathered, the Earth-humans with their own Signs and Persuasions, some of which we can learn and some of which we can't. The only reason global warning isn't even worse today than it is, is the modest amount of weather control that some of the Outgathered can do. Lastly, there are the real Outsiders, who don't know about the People and couldn't be trusted with the knowledge if they had it.

Of course, the term "Earth-human" is misleading. All the People came from Earth in the beginning: that's obvious. The very existence of Blends shows that all of us are the same species. Whatever made it possible for the proto-People to leave the Earth for the Home couldn't have been spaceships, of course: it must have been something that only those with Gifts could get through. Searches of the collective memories of the People tend to show that the event called the Bright Beginning was the point at which the People arrived on the Old Home, and the Memories don't go back any further than that.

But whatever. All Earth-humans originated in Africa, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to call everyone an African today. In the same way, having distant human ancestry tens of thousands of years back doesn't make _you_ an Earth-human.

In Cougar Canyon, practically everyone has Memories, and it was natural to think that they were somehow genetic. They aren't, though. Anyone whose mother was of the People passes the memories to her children in the womb. On the Home, that was absolutely anyone, but -- well, take me for example. My mother was a Blend, but her mother was pure Earth-human, so she didn't have the Memories and consequently I don't either.

What's more, I don't have any of the special Gifts, only the common ones like the animate and inanimate lift and telepathy. But Blends have always been part of the People here on Earth, whatever they can and can't do. The hell with what those snobs on the New Home think about it. On Earth, we know better than to care about someone's "blood quantum". Some People like me do have partial Memories, and of course if we've been part of Assembling as I have we can remember quite a lot.

Me? I grew up in suburbia like lots of people of my generation, and moved to the city when I was old enough. And I'm not leaving it except feet first. I've lived a fairly ordinary life, that is if you don't count flying low over the Hudson with the family from time to time! Outsiders who catch sight of us, which doesn't happen very often, wind up thinking they just saw a small airplane, thanks to my wife's very special talents.

The People aren't limited to the United States, of course. Not only are there plenty of People from Cougar Canyon and Bendo living abroad, but there are four other Groups as well. You haven't? What do they teach you in the schools these days?

First, about Bendo. As you probably do know, most of the Bendo Group went to the New Home back in '56. They'd had "a thin time of it" on Earth, as one of them said back then, and many of them just wanted to go where they would never need to see an Outsider again, any kind of Outsider. The ones who remained became ... resolute. It was Bendo that first realized that you could get away with more in the cities than in small towns, and moved everyone in the Group to different parts of the country, so no one pogrom could catch them all.

Of course, there haven't been any pogroms in the last sixty years, and Bendo has had a lot to do with that too. Bendo people marched at Selma, and at Stonewall. Bendo Sorters helped keep the March on Washington -- the many marches -- non-violent. They developed the shield technique I just showed you, that keeps Us from being overwhelmed by emotions in large quantities without feeling like our brains have been packed in cotton balls. They kept the old Bendo site as a sort of combined summer camp and training facility, and whoever is able to Gathers there every year. Those who can't hear or send Calls use email instead.

It's pretty clear to anyone who thinks about it that the People are going to become known before too many more decades pass, and the Outsiders have to be ready for it. The woman who wrote the script for _E.T. The Extraterrestrial_ was one of Us. No, for heavens' sake, not Steven Spielberg. He's as Earth-human as he can be. No, I don't remember. _Adonday veeah_ , Google it!

Well, anyway. The Krasny Sigorsk group is in Ukraine. A lot of their technology survived, along with all the Designs and Persuasions from the Home, and that turned out to be a Good Thing. Only a few People got separated from the Group, apparently including my great-grandfather. He had Visions, which he was able to disguise as epileptic seizures. Krasny Sigorsk had an even thinner time of it than Bendo under the Tsars, but they made themselves useful to the Communists with bits of People technology, being careful never to reveal too much. And somehow, Stalin never seemed to think of them when he got into one of his paranoid moods.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that one of the reasons first the Soviets and then the U.S. were obssessed with psionic spying back in the Sixties is that some of the Soviets could actually do it! Bendo has been in steady touch with them, along with the Cougar Canyon elders, ever since the Wall came down in '89. Nobody suspects them of disloyalty, even in this difficult period, and they've managed to stay out of the revolutions and counter-revolutions in Ukraine except for very mild encouragements toward freedom now and again.

The Homeland Group is in the African savannah. They were able to modify their skin color so as not to stand out too much, and they live more like we did on the Home than any other group, or I should say, more like we used to live on the Home between the Peace and the End. They broke up their own spaceship and discarded it, learning to blend in from the surrounding peoples. Why there? Well, the ships were programmed -- or maybe it would be better to say _told_ , like you tell a dog to do something -- to look for places without too many inhabitants. That's why the Grong Grong Group landed in the middle of Australia, masquerading as unusual-looking Aboriginals, and the Abominable Snowman Group in far Western China.

No, of course they aren't really called that. Grong Grong gave them the name. Like most Aussies, Grong Grong People are incorrigible deadpan snarkers. For one thing, they don't live anywhere near Grong Grong; yes, it's a real place. The Group's name is just camouflage. They still routinely speak the language of the Home (which Outsiders assume is just another indigenous language) as well as Australian English.

And then there's the Seventh Group, which doesn't have a name. It's made up of some of the Outgathered, and the purpose of it is to keep as many Gifts and Memories alive as possible if anything ever happened to the People. There are DNA tests that can spot us, and a hostile government might wind up sending everyone with "non-human" genetic markers to a camp someday. Yes, I know, it's a horrible idea, but you have to accept that whatever can happen, can happen to you. The people of the Seventh don't have those markers, and they live in as stable and democratic and non-violent a country as they can find.

No, you have no need to know which country. If there's need one day, and we all have to flee, then you'll know how to find Mother Dita's Kittens. Or they'll find you.

But enough of all that. Right now, the People are doing fairly well for themselves here in the Big Apple. We don't form a Group as such, but there are enough of us that we have places to get together, "safe spaces" they call them nowadays. We're in every field: finance, technology, local politics, public service. Yes, some of us died on 9/11. I still feel the emotional scar from it. But that was a long time ago, and I've had help, both People-type and regular, and I don't brood about it much any more.

So what would you like to see and do first?

**Author's Note:**

> More to come.


End file.
